About HIV and AIDS

HIV is dangerous because it can lead to people dying. It does this by slowly destroying the body’s way of protecting itself - “the immune system”.

People who have had HIV for a long time can become extremely weak and get ill very easily.

When doctors say that someone has developed AIDS it means that their body has reached a point where it can no longer protect itself from illness. When this happens, a person can easily become very ill with a serious disease like pneumonia or cancer.

In Malawi, HIV has spread on a massive scale – it has become what is called an “epidemic”. About one in every seven grown-ups in Malawi now has HIV. As Malawi is a poor country, people do not have the medical help they need and many grown-ups go on to develop AIDS, become very ill and die.

This is why around 600,000 Malawian children have been orphaned by AIDS.

Yes, there are some people in the UK who have HIV but they are very few compared with the number of people who have the virus in Malawi.

In the UK, we have lots of doctors, nurses and teachers who give grown-ups advice about how not to get HIV and medicines to help people who are ill.

People with HIV in the UK are looked after well by doctors and usually enjoy a good, normal life for many years.

You cannot get HIV from doing ordinary things like being friends with someone who has HIV, kissing them, hugging them, or sharing their drink. People with HIV should be treated just like everyone else.